The Remarkable Rise of Eliza Jumel (7 page)

The transition from Betsy to Eliza marked the start of a new phase in life for the twenty-eight-year-old woman from Providence. In eighteenth- and nineteenth-century novels, changing one's name was an act of reinvention, celebrating the start of a new, self-fashioned existence.
⁵
American women embraced the fictional practice in real life. To women of the early nineteenth century, whether they worked for a living or were comfortably middle class, the lilting “Eliza” and Italianate “Maria” seemed more elegant than the
sensible “Betsy” or “Mary.”
⁶
Contemporaries noticed that even poor girls who staffed the lowest class of brothels adopted refined sobriquets; they were “almost all ‘Ann Eliza's,' ‘Ann Maria's,' ‘Melissa Matilda's,' &c.”
⁷

Eliza Brown, as we must call her now, changed her surname as well as her first name. Possibly the shift from “Bowen” to “Brown” was plotted to suggest a relationship with the respected and wealthy Brown brothers of Providence, known for their mercantile success and generous philanthropy. Her city of origin, which she never disguised, could have made a connection with the distinguished Brown family seem plausible.

Eliza's new lodgings were on the same street where Stephen had settled in 1795, soon after his arrival in New York City. Nine years later, more of the surrounding farmland had been built up, but Reed Street remained an inexpensive address, still attracting artisans, cartmen, and laborers. At number 87, Eliza boarded with Sebe and Hannah Brinckerhoff, a couple in their early thirties.
⁸
A house carpenter by trade, Sebe speculated in land as well, perhaps developing the properties himself.
⁹
He and Hannah were raising four children by the time Eliza joined their household, from eleven-year-old Osselchy (named after Sebe's mother) down to tiny, three-month-old Richard.
¹⁰

From the Reed Street address, Eliza had to walk only one block east to reach Broadway, Manhattan's main north–south artery. From there, a five-block stroll south took her to Barclay Street, where she could make a left to skirt the edge of what would soon become City Hall Park—ground was broken for the new city hall on May 27, 1803. If she turned left again almost immediately, she would find herself on Park Row, in front of the handsome Park Theatre, completed in 1798 at a cost of over $130,000.
¹¹

From a niche in the building's pediment, a bust of Shakespeare watched over theatergoers passing beneath the arched portico below. Inside, painted cupids fluttered over a high dome, while flickering candles in an immense chandelier created a dramatic play of light and shadow. A blue mohair curtain decorated with a golden lyre hung between faux marble columns on either side of the stage.
¹²

Soon Eliza would become familiar with the view from the stage. According to William Dunlap, the Park's general manager until 1805, “She had been a supernum[er]ary [i.e., extra] at the Theatre before Jumel married her.”
¹³
This bare statement is all that we know for certain of Eliza's theatrical career.

What attracted her to the stage? We can only speculate. A drama critic of the day identified the appeal of acting “among the middling ranks of mankind” as “a hope of genteel income and a profusion of public panegyric.”
¹⁴
Dunlap met many young people with such aspirations. “The frequent applications of
would-be
authors and actors is a source of trouble to all managers,” he wrote. “Sometimes the applications are vexatious, sometimes ludicrous.”
¹⁵
That Eliza made it onto the boards suggests that she showed more promise than the average supplicant. She must have presented herself with poise, moved gracefully, and been quick to learn gestures and stage directions.

At the Park Theatre, she would have been able to admire the “tall and elegant” Elizabeth Johnson, who excelled at depicting tragic heroines and well-born ladies of fashion, and the versatile Frances Hodgkinson, who “surpassed all her contemporaries in rustic comedy and singing parts, in chambermaids and soubrettes.” Then there was Charlotte Melmoth, a superb tragedian, although limited to “matronly characters” due to “her unfortunate bulk,” and Hodgkinson's mother, Hannah Brett, “a valuable actress of old women and coarse chambermaids.” The industrious John Martin could turn his talents to any role, while the handsome and dignified Joseph Tyler “bore away the palms from all competitors” in playing elderly characters requiring an aristocratic bearing.”
¹⁶
In the theater Eliza would have learned to adopt the manners of the upper classes and transform herself in daily life as thoroughly as if she were playing a new part.

Even as an insignificant extra, she could have attracted admirers who appreciated her oval face and straight nose; the blue eyes that contrasted pleasingly with her dark brown hair; and the trim figure that at five feet, four inches, was neither unpleasingly lanky nor distressingly squab.
¹⁷
But her early theatrical employment would leave
a lasting blot on her reputation. Actresses were tarred in the court of public opinion because inadequate salaries led some to supplement their incomes with prostitution. Tom Ford, a supernumerary in Boston who gave up his salary to the captain of the extras in return for introductions to attractive ballet girls, was not the only man hanging around the theater who hoped to enjoy more than a theatrical performance.
¹⁸
The reputations of women who aspired to the dramatic arts were blighted further by persistence of the notorious “third tier.” In a tradition adopted from English theaters, prostitutes populated the uppermost boxes of American playhouses, drawing attention from the stage.
¹⁹
By extrapolation, their presence contributed to the raffish reputation of the actors and actresses below.

In spite of the disadvantages it entailed, Eliza's work as a supernumerary hints at important aspects of her character. She was ambitious: what super would not envision herself stepping into the lead? She was bold: she entered into employment most women would shun. She liked attention: throughout her adult life, she favored actions that could bring her public recognition. She was confident: she maintained her enthusiasm for the theater in after years, although it might remind people of what she had been.

Extras were employed irregularly and paid negligible wages—as little as twenty five cents per night as late as 1839—so Eliza must have had an additional source of income.
²⁰
She was supporting both herself and a thirteen-year-old boy. Her young companion, William B. Ballou, was a fellow Rhode Islander, a member of a large clan descended from Maturin Ballou, one of the founders of Rhode Island.
²¹
William's father, David, a ship carpenter, began to trade with the West Indies after the American Revolution. He was prosperous for a time, owning real estate in North Providence and a store in Pawtucket, Rhode Island. With his wife, Lucy Martin, who came from nearby Rehoboth, Massachusetts, he had eight children, of whom five survived infancy. William, the sixth child, was born on December 6, 1790.
²²

After Lucy died in 1800, David, suffering from business reverses, broke up the household. He left Providence, placing his youngest
children with others who would raise them.
²³
Eliza took on William's care.
²⁴
As a single woman, she was a curious choice of caretaker. It is worth speculating whether she might have tended the boy when he was an infant. In 1789, when Eliza was fourteen, her mistress Charlotte Allen died.
²⁵
Bound-out girls were removed from a household if there wasn't a woman to supervise them, so Eliza would have been placed elsewhere after Samuel Allen was widowed.
²⁶
If she had worked in David Ballou's household and cared for young William, she would have been a plausible person to turn to later, when the boy needed a home after his mother died. Perhaps she was given money to care for him. She could have earned extra money doing housework or child care, conceivably assisting Hannah Brinckerhoff in exchange for her lodging. If so, her nights on the stage would have offered a respite from the drudgery. Once she entered the door of the theater, she could dream of a more brilliant future.

7

M
aybe it began with a visit to the theater, Stephen's attention caught by an attractive face paired with sharply intelligent eyes. “Connections formed on the Stage sometimes enable those to become independent, who, if they had been left to the reward of their own abilities, must have pined in want.”
¹
More likely Reed Street was the link between the two—Stephen visiting a former neighbor, finding Eliza there chatting or taking tea.
²
Whatever the origin, the acquaintance flourished.

By the beginning of January 1804, Stephen had begun to employ a manservant to shave him and dress his hair.
³
The need for a valet—as well a purchase of hair powder a few years later—suggests that he wore his dark locks powdered, a convention that persisted among upper-middle-class Americans into the first decade of the nineteenth century.
⁴
Was Stephen paying more attention to his appearance because there was a woman in his life? At the beginning of February, he spent an extravagant thirty-five dollars on a “lady's pelisse” (the term referred to a coat or cloak, sometimes trimmed or lined with fur).
*
⁵
Eliza's name appears for the first time in his
papers a month later. In early March, he engaged two tutors, one for her and one for William Ballou. Each received three months of tuition in French.
⁶

Monday, April 2, 1804, was Eliza's twenty-ninth birthday. One week later, on “a fine mild day,” she and thirty-eight-year-old Stephen were united in a Catholic ceremony.
⁷
(Like most Frenchmen of the period, Stephen was Catholic. Eliza was not; her parents were married in the Congregational Church.) Father William W. O'Brien, pastor of Manhattan's only Roman Catholic church, officiated.

Writing in Latin, he penned the marriage certificate of “Stephanus Jumell” and “Elizabethum Browne”:

To all readers of this notice:

Greetings in the Lord

I, enfranchised Catholic apostolic priest, pastor, and rector of the Church of St. Peter the Apostle, by these present notify and witness to all, on this day, the 9th of April 1804, have joined in matrimony Stephen Jumel and Elizabeth Brown. The witnesses present were Blasius Philip Lapeyre and William B. Bellow [
sic
]. In this fact I have fixed by hand the proper sign and seal.
⁸

In spite of this sober certificate, a highly colored narrative about the genesis of the marriage has become one of the most enduring stories told of Eliza. It is first recorded in a rambling letter that a prominent New Yorker named John Pintard wrote in 1821. Gossiping to his oldest daughter about the couple, Pintard stirred in a juicy piece of scandal:

Stephen Jumel was a French merchant who came to this country at the earliest stage of the French Revolution. It was said that he had been a priest. At any rate he was successful in commerce … M
^rs
J … was his
chere
[
sic
]
amie
[i.e., mistress]. In a fit of illness, w[hic]h she was adroit eno[ugh] to consider her last, she c[oul]d not die in peace until she was lawfully married. To quiet her conscience Jumel married her & Madam recovered, & made him a good wife.
⁹

The anecdote has the flavor of a scene from a melodrama. A director might stage it something like this:

Eliza is on her deathbed, restless and pale, muttering a few broken words. Stephen, at the bedside, leans over to hear her. She clutches his hand feverishly, almost deliriously; a fixation has her in its grasp: “If you ever loved me, let me die a wife, not a mistress. If you ever loved me …” She repeats the same words over and over.